Plaster Dust is not as fun as SNOW!

All over the web are blogs of snow. Knitters and weavers and spinners snowed in. White stuff covering trees and decks and driveways. White Christmas was the theme this year. Even here.

But here it wasn't from snow. It was from plaster dust. But now it is all carted out and the dust has been vacuumed and washed away. Why did we do this? (Actually, El Esposo did most of it, I helped cart it out and helped clean up. He did the grinding and tearing out-- the dirtiest work.) While the electrician is working on the downstairs construction project we are having the electrical in the room just above upgraded. It is knob and tube, there are very few outlets and only one with a ground. Also, because of water damage documented here earlier in the year, we tore out a closet and part of the plaster in this room. We also discovered that it wasn't originally a room--just an addition to the landing that made a large mezzanine. So we tore out the wall that made it a separate room and put it back the way it was originally. (Well, not quite originally. The space is part of an addition that we think was put in shortly after the house was built. Our construction project downstairs is to stabilize the addition. It was settling differently than the house and causing trouble!)
OK, so here is a pictorial of our efforts.
This is the room with the pile of rubble in the middle waiting to be taken out.
Here is a picture of the ceiling removed where the old addition had cracked away from the main house.

The white that you can see near the top of the photo inside the hole is the stucco that had been the back of the house when it was first built. Here is a closer view.
And another. I am looking up into the hole in the ceiling. You can see the roof of the old addition at the top of the photo against the white stucco that had been the back of the house (the roof of the main house is higher than the roof of the old addition).
We had a pretty good system for getting the debris out to the truck. Pile it on plastic that was on top of a mover's blanket. Wrap the plastic around it, then the blanket and carry/drag it down the stairs and out to the truck. It took about ten trips. Here is a picture of our last trip.

Here is the room all cleaned up and waiting for the electrician, some floor repairs by El Esposo and then the plasterer.
Here are a few more photos of the plaster removed.

In the pictures below you can see on the floor where the bookcase wall used to be. We now think that was added around the sixties when the second family lived here so that they could use the space as an additional bedroom.

Notice the papers in the window in the picture above. They are paint chips for when we are finally ready to paint this. The main color is called "Orangery." We will be looking at this color and the lighter cream trim color over the next few months deciding if we like it or not. Painting will be far in the future! This room wasn't even part of the original construction plans. It is a good example of "mission creep."

As for some weaving content to this post, the behemoth loom is going up here in this room if we can figure out how to get the thing up the stairs.
It is a 12 harness, 54 inch Macomber and it is HEAVY! My favorite plaster removal specialist is tired of looking at it in the living room and it doesn't fit in my studio. He says he likes to see the finished products in the living room, but is not fond of seeing the process in the living room. Too messy! (Although he is the one that found this gem in the classifieds!) So up to the mezzanine it will go. I am ashamed to say that I haven't yet woven on it. I have to figure out how to attach the brake cable. I guess that will have to be another post...